Blackwater's owner and founder Erik Prince, was an intern in George H. W. Bush's White House. Prince is a major financial supporter of Republican Party causes and candidates. Cofer Black, the company's current vice chairman, was director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center (CTC) at the time of the September 11 attacks in 2001. After leaving public service, Black became chairman of the privately owned intelligence gathering company Total Intelligence Solutions, Inc., as well as vice chairman for Blackwater.

During his testimony before Congress, when the term "mercenaries" was used to describe Blackwater employees, Prince objected, characterizing them as "loyal Americans".

A Committee on Oversight and Government Reform staff report, based largely on internal Blackwater e-mail messages and State Department documents, describes Blackwater as "being staffed with reckless, shoot-first guards who were not always sober and did not always stop to see who or what was hit by their bullets."

A staff report compiled by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on behalf of Representative Waxman questioned the cost-effectiveness of using Blackwater forces instead of U.S. troops. Blackwater charges the government $1,222 per day per guard, "equivalent to $445,000 per year, or six times more than the cost of an equivalent U.S. soldier," the report alleged.

There are a variety of ongoing controversies involving Blackwater Worldwide. It has alternatively been referred to as a security contractor or a mercenary organization by numerous reports by the U.S. and international media. Critics consider Blackwater's self-description as a private military company to be a euphemism for mercenary activities. Jeremy Scahill points out that Chilean nationals, mostly former soldiers, whose country of origin does not participate in hostilities in Iraq, work for Blackwater in that country, thus those Chileans meet the definition of "mercenary." At least 60 Chilean Blackwater employees were trained during dictator Augusto Pinochet's regime. Author Chris Hedges wrote about the establishment of mercenary armies, referring to Blackwater as an example of such a force, asserting its existence as a threat to democracy and a step towards the creation of a modern day Praetorian Guard in a June 3, 2007 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Critics have suggested this may be going too far in putting political decisions in the hands of privately owned corporations.

In December 2006, an Iraqi politician, Ayham al-Samarie, escaped from a prison in Iraq, where he was awaiting trial for 12 criminal corruption cases. Blackwater, which he had hired for protection before his arrest, allegedly helped him escape. On September 22, 2007, U.S. federal prosecutors announced an investigation into allegations that Blackwater employees may have smuggled weapons into Iraq, and that these weapons may have been later transferred to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish nationalist group designated a terrorist organization by the United States, NATO and the EU. The U.S. government was investigating Blackwater for these alleged crimes. On October 4, 2007, the FBI took over the investigation.

In January 2008, Marshall Adame, a Democrat running for Congress in North Carolina's 3rd District, took part in a live question-and-answer forum where he was asked a question about Blackwater. Adame, who had served as a State Department official in Iraq recounted, "I saw them shoot people, I saw them crash into cars while I was their passenger. There was absolutely no reason, no provocation whatsoever." He then stated, "There is no place in the American force structure, or in American culture for mercenaries, they are guns for hire; No more, no less."

This led Blackwater executive vice president Bill Mathews to send an internal corporate email to staff:There is a man named Marshall Adame who is running for congress in our district. He just put a quote online which says he wants this company and all of us to cease to exist. Do you like your jobs? Are you sick and tired of the slanderous bullshit going on in DC? If so, would you all mind joining me in reminding Mr. Adame that he is running for office in our backyard. Tell all your friends and family too. We welcome their assistance in making this point very clear to Mr. Adame. Anyone who wants to send a letter may do so at the following address....His email is....He was too cowardly to put a phone number on the web. I ask that you keep your comments to Mr. Adame professional (well, mostly professional). We help him if our comments get threatening or too crass. Let’s run this goof out of Dodge...!

As a result of the letter writing campaign Adame stated, "I feel very strongly about how extensively organized Blackwater has become, and I will do everything I can as a congressman to look into that, to find out whether or not the things they're doing are even legal. Ultimately however, Adame was defeated in the 2008 Democratic primary by Craig Weber.

Overall, Blackwater has received over $1 billion USD in government contracts, of which two-thirds are no-bid contracts.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

.this finds me at a time where i feel i am on the edge of understanding.since i was very young, in my crib, i have had an inner sense and connectionwith nature and i've held a most tender heart.i would hear the crickets chirping while i lay in my crib and i would think..."this is how night sounds"

i am unfulfilled. there is something i have to do for humanityand it isn't coming to me. i've known about it and told certain peopleabout it...but it evades me.the little things i do, i hold to myselfi do these things on my own but it's not enough.

i don't know if i am supposed to wait for it to come to meor if i am to seek it out.i'm happy to be here, because i was foundand perhaps more inspiration will point me in the direction i need to be.

i have a fair vocabulary but i often find it difficult to expressfeelings for which i can find no wordsif some things i say make no sense, then i apologize.

for a few weeks in the fall i went along to a local church - their speciality is addicts, they have "programs," people introduce themselves to the congregation by announcing their addiction - but when it came to my turn i said nothing

because if i stood up i would have had to say that it is money i am addicted to - and i think they would have thought i was putting on airs

Thursday, December 25, 2008

As soon as you concern yourselfwith the good and bad of yourfellows you create an opening inyour heart for maliciousness toenter. Testing, competing with andcriticizing others weaken and defeat you.

The Art of Peace that I practicehas room for each of the world'seight million gods, and I cooperatewith them all. The God of Peaceis very great and enjoins all thatis divine and enlightened in every land.

The Path is exceedingly vast.From ancient times to the present dayeven the greatest sages were unableto perceive and comprehend the entire truth.The explanations and teachings ofmasters and saints express only partof the whole. It is not possible foranyone to speak of such thingsin their entirety. Just head for thelight and heat, learn from the Holy Booksand through the virtue of devotedpractice of the Art of Peacebecome one with the Divine.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

According to the United Nations, thousands of women and children throughout the world disappear each day to be sold into sexual slavery.

In Bombay alone, 90 new cases of HIV infection are reported every hour, and the victims are getting younger: two decades ago, most women in India’s brothels were in their twenties or thirties. Today, the average age is 14.

The child sex trade is a highly organized syndicate that rivals the drug trade in profitability. Recruiters capture them, smugglers transport them, brothel owners enslave them, corrupt police betray them and men rape and infect them. Every person in the chain profits except for the girls, who pay the price with their lives: 80 percent become infected with HIV.

Narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Tim Robbins, THE DAY MY GOD DIED puts a human face on these abstract numbers as it recounts the stories of several Nepalese girls who were forced into the international child sex trade.

This heart-wrenching documentary provides a glimpse into the corruption and evil behind the curtain of the global sex industry, a world seldom seen by outsiders. But it is also a reminder that of the over one million women and girls who are sold, transported and forced into sexual slavery each year, 50,000 are in the United States. THE DAY MY GOD DIED exposes crimes that not only occur far away, but also far closer to home than we may have imagined.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Why are a million young girls being sold into sexual slavery every year?Why do immigrants want to come here?Why aren't their own countries as well off?Why are 18,000 innocent children dying each and every day from starvation?Why is our water full of poisons and phamaceuticals?Why is plastic the bane of our age?Why do they cut fins off of sharks and throw them back?Why are young girls subjected to genital mutilation?Why do they fly airplanes into buildings?Why are all the ice caps and glaciers melting?Why do they stone girls who've been raped by their brothers?Why are all the rainforests being destroyed?Why is one religion the "real" one and another is not?Why are Jews and Arabs fighting when they are brothers?Why are priests molesting children?Why are corporations being allowed to buy our government?Why is my penis a pornographic thing?

Could you forgive someone who killed your family and contributed to making your life and the lives of thousands a living hell? I don't know if I could but this lady did. She's one of my new heroes. (The list gets longer every day.) Get to know Immaculée Ilibagiza and discover that forgiveness has the power to change not only the person who forgives, it has the power to change the world.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

She asked me maybe I could share her sorrowFor all the men that tried to treat her wrongThough just a baby, awaiting her tomorrowIt's rock me baby, rock me baby, all night long

She needs an answer to her confusionSomeone to guide her with tendernessBut when she's askin' for a solutionAll that she gets, you know, is something like this

I don't know where we come fromDon't know where we're goin' toBut if all this should have a reasonWe would be the last to knowSo let's just hope there is a promised landHang on 'til thenAs best as you can

Ev'rybody's ills, you know it fills her with compassionThat's why she tries to save the world aloneShe helps the needy in her own fashionAnd tries to give them all her own

She needs an answer to her confusionSomeone to guide her with tendernessBut when she's askin' for a solutionAll that she gets, you know, isSomething like this

I don't know where we come fromDon't know where we're goin' toBut if all this should have a reasonWe would be the last to knowSo let's just hope there is a promised landHang on 'til thenAs best as you can

He suggests that laws preventing gay marriage are as unjust as laws preventing interracial marriage, the very union that led to his own birth. But he further argues that the best way to fight this injustice is to indefinitely cede the central moral argument--that in America all men (and women) must be treated equal--and rather score incremental victories that push the nation in the right direction. In Obama's formulation, it would have been indefinitely acceptable for interracial couples to be denied the rights of civil marriage, if other progress was being made to advance racial equality. In the same way, it is indefinitely acceptable for gay couples to be denied the right to civil marriage, if other progress is being made to give gay couples similar rights. There is an unstated assumption here: If Obama is successful he will clear the way for a subsequent politician to support gay marriage, just as the broader civil rights movement cleared the way for an end to anti-miscegenation laws in 1967 by the (activist?) U.S. Supreme Court.

It's the constant, trapped cycle we're held hostage by thanks to religion: the ceding of real-world, fact-based truths in response to the moral absolutist outrage of the faithful. Time and time again, we're asked to add nuance and ambiguity to an issue because of the belief of someone with no empirical evidence to support their claim.

Some things in this world are proven (beyond a reasonable doubt) and some are not. There is no ambiguity about the theory of evolution thanks to years and years of research and testing; there is no ambiguity about the reality of global climate change and there is no reasonable justification for the abridging of civil rights for a large percentage of the population. While Obama's position is politically savvy, it's still a compromise based on a false premise.

This is the crux of the dubious "bi-partisan coming together" mantra. You ultimately cannot find genuine "middle ground" with those whose beliefs paint the world in a stark black and white of good and evil. At some level, either the believer is remiss in her/his duty by not championing the cause of "righteousness" or we, the reality-based thinkers, are asked to sacrifice dignity for the sake of magic.

Excuse me if I have trouble with that idea.

The problem is that the believers can't be asked to sacrifice anything because they're unwilling; the moral absolutes of their systems of thought prevent such compromises; so it's always the victims of their bullshit that have to suffer through "compromise" for the sake of perpetuating their absurdity.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

"No issue is more pressing than education. ... It is the civil rights issue of our generation" - Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education Designate at today's press conference in Chicago, Ill.

I spend a lot of time in schools talking with students and what I'm forced to conclude is that anyone who finds themselves in the incongruous maze of today's public education system for as many years as our children would be hard pressed to emerge a healthy, contributing member of society who looks back fondly on their time spent there.

There are a plethora of problems: deteriorating infrastructure, an outdated bureaucracy, over-worked and under-qualified teachers, and a pervasive sense that no one's paying attention or listening.

While I value the post-ideological pragmatism exhibited by the Obama Cabinet appointments, I think the place where a pragmatic re-evaluation is needed most is the American education system. I frequently ask groups of students the question: "How many of you feel that what you learn in school is not at all related to your everyday life". Every hand has gone up every time I ask it. What it tells us is that content is dated, unimportant and a big fat waste of time. Students are given materials they care little about as the prism through which to learn the skills necessary to survive in the world. The discerning student brain discards both out of sheer boredom.

And can we blame them for that? Humans naturally look for what's essential. If we can't see it, we ignore it.

Education needs to be relevant again. Every student needs to learn to read, think critically, know logic, basic computation and the ability to intelligently and thoughtfully express her/his thoughts in a variety of forums. Content is ultimately irrelevant, and so it ought to be selected based on the interests of students, rather than academics in ivory towers.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Reich begins to paint the new picture of our economy with a clarity that's been lacking as of late while addressing the underlying assumption of the new found love of Keynes:

The first assumption is that American consumers will eventually regain the purchasing power needed to keep the economy going full tilt. That seems doubtful. Median incomes dropped during the last recovery, adjusted for inflation, and even at the start weren’t much higher than they were in the 1970s. Middle-class families continued to spend at a healthy clip over the last thirty years despite this because women went into paid work, everyone started working longer hours, and then, when these tactics gave out, went deeper and deeper into debt. This indebtedness, in turn, depended on rising home values, which generated hundreds of billions of dollars in home equity loans and refinanced mortgages. But now that the housing bubble has burst, the spending has ended. Families cannot work more hours than they did before, and won’t be able to borrow as much, either.

It's what's been missing from all these haphazard calculations in talking about the recovery packages that Congress and the Treasury have been passing and it's a big part of the reason that everything remains frozen: people have changed. Americans have wizened far quicker than anyone thought to the new era of what Thomas Friedman calls the Climate-Energy-Era, the death of consumerism and the new birth of frugal living and conscientious buying. We're certainly not completely there yet and educational outreach will be needed to fully prep the public for the coming shake-up of a system built on living beyond one's means, but it's a good sign.

What's not so good is that all of the assumptions about what will get this economy moving again have to be rethought; freeing up credit won't matter if people are cautious about using it (as they should be).

She gets it, my core argument for the relocation of the theatre and our greatest source of untapped potential in these dismal days:

And people want to belong to something. If you’re a vibrant member of a church in America, or a casual member of a vibrant church, you’re part of something. If you’re a member of a family that’s together, you are part of something. A lot of Americans do not have these two things.

But she also seems to exhibit a typical conservative, irrational revision of history:

There’s something else going on, a new or renewed sense of national shame. Or communal responsibility. Or a sense of reckoning. Whatever it is it’s a reaction to the excesses of the O’s, a reaction against the ways of those who caused the mess on Wall Street and Main Street. It is a reassertion that there actually are rules, and that it is embarrassing to break them in a way so colorfully damaging and destructive to everyone else.

Ahem.

Pardon me, Ms. Noonan, but were you not part of the Reagan Administration that brought us this mess through the castration of effective government as a market motivator and regulator? The "rules" she cites are the very same "rules" that the Reaganites worked to remove or neuter.

The task at hand now is to revive government as an effective tool in motivating people to make the changes in their lifestyle necessary to ensure our survival; that means a smarter, larger and more demonstrably results-driven Washington.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Friday, December 12, 2008

In over twenty countries around the world, children are direct participants in war. Denied a childhood and often subjected to horrific violence, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 children are serving as soldiers for both rebel groups and government forces in current armed conflicts.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.Strive to be happy.